Fun Size covers the high-school party-comedy checklist well but doesn’t make its own mark
on the genre. Well-written but weakly executed, the film isn’t likely to be cherished by anyone —
if anyone could even remember it three months from now.

Fun Size represents the directorial debut of Josh Schwartz, who developed the teen TV
dramas
The OC and
Gossip Girl. He didn’t write the script, but the film reflects his ability to capture
young people authentically, while simultaneously translating for older generations. His
fingerprints are all over the narrative. Example: In the Schwartz universe, all so-called nerds are
exactly one accessory (usually a pair of dorky glasses or a jacket) from looking like a model.

He also executes the John Hughes trick of making parents seem alien but still likable. In about
four minutes of screen time, Ana Gasteyer as a lesbian mom reaffirms that she is among the most
underrated
Saturday Night Live cast members of all time.

The focus in
Fun Size is on teen science whiz Wren (Victoria Justice), who has captured the attention
of her high school’s alpha male. Fellow geek Roosevelt (Thomas Mann) completes the love triangle.
On the way to the big party, Wren’s prank-loving 8-year-old brother gets lost trick-or-treating.
The last two thirds of the movie is a combination of
Problem Child and
The Fugitive, if both were reimagined as a 1980s Molly Ringwald vehicle.

The story lacks momentum, with a particularly useless subplot involving a convenience store
clerk. He is one of several disturbing adults who choose to recruit the second-grader as a criminal
accomplice or mascot instead of notifying police about the child’s whereabouts.

That would be easier to stomach in a movie with more focus, but
Fun Size seems trapped in a limbo between a hyperkinetic comedy for kids and something
more outlaw for teens. The PG-13 rating might have been a lucrative move, but it seems like there
is an internal struggle going on between PG or R.

Screenwriter Max Werner, a veteran of
The Colbert Report, shows he can write a good script under any circumstance. Individual
moments shine — such as Wren’s hero worship of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a witty scene in which Wren’s
mom (Chelsea Handler) bonds with the parents of her too-young boyfriend’s best friend.

And then there is the destruction of Roosevelt’s Volvo, borrowed from his mothers — which is
violated in a particularly entertaining way. On the teen-comedy scale, it falls somewhere between
the fate of Joel Goodson’s dad’s Porsche in
Risky Business and Charles Jefferson’s car in
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Hope someone’s old man has an ultimate set of tools.